Going Backward After 9/11

You may have already read about the administration's decision to allow small scissors on planes again. Now CongressDaily is reporting that another air travel safety improvement after 9/11 is on the chopping block: The House Homeland Security Committee wants airports to opt out of the Transportation Security Administration's aviation screening program as part of an agency reorganization the panel proposed today. Homeland Security Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection and Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairman Dan Lungren, R-Calif., said legislation the committee is introducing would provide airports with incentives and flexibility to hire private screeners. If airport owners can show a savings by hiring a private screening company as opposed to federal screeners, the owner can use the savings to buy more technology, Lungren said. He dismissed the notion that the bill aims to eliminate the federal screening program but rather gives airports flexibility to get around the cap on the number of federal screeners. Congress has prohibited TSA from hiring more than 45,000 screeners since creating the agency after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Lungren, along with Homeland Security Chairman King, said he wants to move the bill early next year. The problem of airports hiring cut-rate bottom-of-the-barrel security screeners was immediately corrected, years too late, when the terrorist attacks of 9/11 made it no longer politically feasible to put the public at risk. Guess 9/11 didn't change everything after all.
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